If you have ever gazed upon the National Palace Museum’s Jade Cabbage or Meat-Shaped Stone and felt your stomach rumbling, but feared the legal (and dental) repercussions of taking a bite, yearn no more. Silks Palace, which opened last month next to the museum, offers five stories of Chinese and Taiwanese food, including a food court in the basement and a banquet hall on the third floor.
The first and second floors feature Cantonese cuisine in an elegant setting that, as would be expected, makes liberal use of decorative motifs from the museum’s collection of Chinese art and antiques. The dining area is partitioned with delicate wooden lattice screens and reproductions of Tang Dynasty paintings of buxom maidens at banquets adorn the walls. Warm, bright spotlights hang over the tables, illuminating each dish like a priceless curio (or delicious piece of masterfully carved agate pork). The menus, which are bound in heavy white acrylic covers, have paragraphs on topics ranging from the history of Chinese barbecue to a biography of Song Dynasty poet Su Shi (蘇軾).
For dinner, we selected barbecued pork (蜜汁叉燒, NT$320), fried rice with minced chicken and salty fish (鹹魚雞粒炒飯, NT$280), stewed eggplant with crab claw in casserole (魚香茄子蟹拑煲, NT$380) and sauteed fresh lily bulbs and yellow fungus (鮮百合炒黃, NT$350).
The pork, which is marinated in a honey sauce, lives up to any Meat-Shaped Stone-induced fantasies. The slices are moist, delicately rimmed with flavorful fat, and served on a bed of stewed peanuts, which soak up the juices well. A jewel-like selection of pickled vegetables is a pleasant complement to the sweetness of the pork.
The fried rice is equally pleasing — fluffy without being too oily or too dry. Chicken, salty fish and scallions serve as delicate flavor accents in the egg-flavored rice.
Seafood lovers may be slightly disappointed with the hearty eggplant and crab claw casserole because the flavor of the crabmeat blends in with, and is slightly overshadowed by, the flavor of the eggplant and brown sauce. Other diners, however, will be happy with the generous pieces of tender crab, which are plump, firm and not flaky, a sign of freshness.
The lily bulbs and yellow fungus are sauteed with asparagus in a light sauce and present a unique array of textures. The yellow fungus is similar in mouth-feel to snow fungus, which is often used in sweet dessert soups, but is more substantial and has a very subtle bamboo-like tanginess. The small, white layers of lily bulb resemble miniature bok choy leaves, with a flavor and texture like baked garlic cloves minus the bite.
We finished with the restaurant’s most popular dessert, milk flan with mango sauce (香芒凍奶酪, NT$100). Mango custard is a common enough dessert in Taiwanese restaurants, but Silks Palace takes it one step further. The flan is creamier, richer and less “eggy” in flavor than most mango custards. The lusciously golden mango sauce, however, is the highlight of the dish. Pureed from fresh fruit, its sweetness is tempered with a refreshingly sharp tartness.
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